Téa Leoni and Tim Daly for ‘Newlyweds’ | Conversations at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation

So, turns out, you two have chemistry. Who knew? I mean, right? So tell us about how this show happened. Were you looking for something to do together? Were you looking specifically for a sitcom? Give us the origin story. You want to go or do you want me? You can go. So, we were looking for something to do together because we had done Madam Secretary for six years. Oh, thank you. And that dealt with a lot of very serious and dire geopolitical issues. We also had quite an aspirational marriage in that. And we were actually going out. We have the longest set romance in history. But after that, we thought, you know, none of the aspirational political stuff seemed to take hold in this country. So we thought we would do, you know, look for something that was a little lighter and, you know, give people a laugh because, my gosh, we could all use it. And we were looking around for something. And then Jamie Lee Curtis called and said, you know, here's this show for you called Newlyweds. And we were actually newlyweds. And you know, when Jamie asks you to do something, you do it for your own physical safety. And so, it just all worked out really wonderful. We had this kind of miraculous and lucky experience of being able to work together, again, playing a married couple as an actual married couple. Wow. Well done, sir. Thank you. Taya, what was the, first of all, were you worried it was going to be like Newlyweds a reality show at first? You know what? I challenge anybody to a round of Newlyweds against us. Newlywed game, you mean? Yeah, the Newlywed game. What's the option? Yeah. I mean, you guys, I saw you do this on the Today Show and you killed. But like in a kind of crazy way. Like you actually know each other. We spend a lot of time together. I know what he's going to do. But we still like each other, which is just incredible. And it comes through on screen. Taya, tell me about Jamie's like pitch. She was like, I have this show, Newlyweds, and you know you're going to say yes, because as Tim said, it's Jamie Lee Curtis and you have to. But what was the, what was it about these characters that you thought, oh yeah, like I can get into this? It would be, it's so much simpler than that. We had just gotten married. She pitched this idea. She was like, it's two people. They're old. They get married after one schtup. It's called Newlyweds. And I was like, okay. It was about like that. I mean, we, I, we both really wanted to do another sitcom. There's nothing like it. As an actor, there is nothing like it. I would never do theater. Just saying the word theater, look, I'm like flop sweating. Every, when Tim decides to do a play, it takes its toll on Taya. I mean, he'll be, it'll be like 4.30 or, and I'll be like, are you going to get on the train? Are you going to head downtown now? Why are you not on the train? And then he's like, because I have plenty of time. I'm like, please just leave the house. Just get out of the apartment right now. I can't stay. Like I just, and then you could go up there and you could just go blank and not know your line. And there's like hundreds of people sitting there. No way. I would never do that. But here's the thing. This is kind of like doing that except, except it's much more forgiving because if you fuck up, can I say that? You sure can. Did you see me? I did like, these are actors. They're cursing on the whole time in their minds right now. If you fuck up, you know, you get another chance and the audience, by the way, loves it. Because not only do they get to see the show, they get to see how the show is made. So they're seeing how the sausage is made. They're seeing that you're fallible and human and they're participating in it. Yes. That's, that's the part that I really loved about it from before is that you are playing with people. You're actually, we're working off of what they're giving us and we're changing things up last minute because we figure out that something sucks. And then we were like, oh, could somebody quickly write a better joke? But it's like, it really is like a creative dialogue between the audience and the performers and you're all making the show together, which is really cool. But the other reason, I think one of the other reasons that makes doing a sitcom such a great job besides the schedule is that it's kind of like trying to keep a feather in the air. If you just like, just blow it lightly, it will float and it'll be great. If you grab onto it, boom, you'll smash into the ground. You have to touch it very gently because the jokes have a short shelf life. So you don't want to work too hard, which is great for lazy people. And the lazier you are, the funnier and the more immediate and the better it is. That's just not true. I think it is really interesting that it's a multi-cam. First of all, Taya, that doing theater makes you nervous because as Tim said, you're doing theater when you do this show, you have, you know, even if you can do a do-over. Yes, that do-over part is really big. Like, that's a big part of it. That's a really big part of it. And I'm, I do, I still get like, when I did it the first time in this thing called Flying Blind, which is like so long ago, no one here is maybe old enough. I am. But they used to hang air sickness bags behind the sets because I would hurl. I was so scared to get out there. And then once I kind of, once I started working with the audience and I started feeling safe, then I was fine and I didn't throw up anymore. This time I'm not throwing up at all, which is delightful. Because I'm there. For me. I'm there. It is true. It is true. And oh, this is interesting. I didn't really think it was going to matter that it was, you know, us working together. Like, we were going to have fun and we were going to be able to spend time together. But here's the funny part. I know him so well that, and this doesn't happen normally, you know, and in a film, it's so brief. They barely give you any rehearsal time and then you're thrown in and if you hate each other or love each other, that works. Great chemistry. But that middle part can be really mushy and not great. And but the second thing, this thing that I hadn't thought about is that I know him so well that I can see how long I can pull on him. Like how long I can like, I can suspend something and I know when he's coming in so I know when to turn. I mean, it's really fun. That's hot. That is hot. That's really hot. What are you doing later? Do you guys have a rehearsal process with this and do you like rehearsing? Some actors hate rehearsing. No, no. I mean, I think we're going to say the same thing on this. Rehearsing. This is the newlywed game part? Yeah, this is the newlywed game part. Write it down while I'm talking to them. No, but rehearsing with props. This is something that I think a lot of actors, they don't necessarily think about. But boy, I want to know my props. I want to know where they are. I want to know how to work them. I want to know how far I can bend them until they snap. And I want to bring more in throughout the week. So Monday is pretty balled around a table, maybe walking in and out of a room. I never do anything Friday that I did Monday. But the jokes, like once you know they land, then I just start fucking around. And then during the week, I'm doing anything to not say it 10 times. That's the blowing the feather as opposed to grasping it part. When I was a baby actor, I was a member of a regional theater in Providence, Rhode Island called Trinity Rep. And it was run by this genius guy, thank you, named Adrian Hall. And Adrian, he was very Texas, and he always stuttered, and he never knew anyone's name. He always called him Darlene, Darlene, Darlene, and he would say, Darlene, props are your enemy, and furniture is your friend. And I've always thought about that, because props can, unless you become really familiar with them, they can become your enemy big time. Furniture, you can always lean on and hold on to or sit on, which makes you much more relaxed. But yeah, props, you've got to rehearse them. What was the muscle memory like going back to a multicam? Because you both, I mean, Taz, you said you did this a while ago. Tim, you also did multicam a while ago and have done so many things since then. Was it a different, I don't know, is your acting different? Is your approach to it changed? Mine hasn't. I think one of the things about doing a sitcom, because it's a weird hybrid, it's a unique art form, and I think you have to stay incredibly naive and innocent. You have to really amp up your ability to suspend your disbelief, because you sometimes are believing so desperately in things that are so ridiculous. And the only way to have the audience come along with you is to really put your guts into it and just believe it as hard as you can. Tael always uses the example of Lucille Ball, and I love Lucille. It's a perfect example of someone who never wavered in their true and deep belief in something absurd. And that's how you bring the audience along. And if you do that, you can get away with doing something really big, you know, as long as you kind of, I think, bring it back to something that's maybe a little more heartfelt and honest. Yeah. I mean, speaking of the physical, I mean, talking about Lucille Ball, Tael, Jamie Lee Curtis has talked about how much fun it's been to watch you do so much physical comedy on this show. So, I mean, you're great at it. I mean, and you've done it. You've done it. But how is it doing it now? I love it. I love throwing my body into things, like, literally. Sorry, sorry, sorry, I'm going to stop. Face this way for a minute. You know, physical comedy, it's funny to even sort of say it. It's just, it's sort of, it should just be, don't talk about it. Don't ever talk about physical comedy, just because there's nothing at the end of that. Period. Just don't. But I do love it. I do look for it. I look at everything in the room as something that I could jump on. And then, more importantly, how am I going to miss? And how badly is it going to hurt? These are all things I'm considering now that I'm 60, I have to think a little bit more about it. Oh, I remember a great story about Lucille Ball, that when she came back years later and she was doing what Lucille does, and there was a curtain rod involved. This was in front of a live audience. And so she sort of, in trying to do something, she ended up hanging by the curtain rod, and the audience gasped. And she said that was when she knew it was done. She could no longer do it, because if they're worried about you, it doesn't work. If they're worried, you're going to break a hip. Yeah. Why not? It's not going to be good. I'm going to take it until I do break a hip, and then I'll be like, shit, it went too long. Bite your tongue. Don't invite the evil spirits. Tell us about one thing that the other has done on set that you kind of lost it. It just cracked you up. We have a rule. We don't lose it. We have a rule. We just do. We don't talk about it, but we don't break. Really? Ever? No. I will never break. And it's hard. It is hard. But you work so hard to build this tension, and you break? That better be the joke, because it's over after that. You don't have time to go back and start over. It's a good rule for anyone who's acting in filmed entertainment also, though, because it's edited differently in a sitcom. But even if you're doing a television show or a movie, it's made of tiny little moments. And if something goes incredibly wrong, if you stay in it, there might be some moment. I remember I learned a big lesson on my very first movie a million years ago, Diner. And I was doing a scene with this crazy-ass woman named Jessica James and Steve Guttenberg, and something happened, and I lost it, and I started cracking up. And then I turned, and I said, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And Michael Evanston ran over to me, and he goes, no, no, that was amazing. That was brilliant. Like, oh, just don't. Like that was so great. We could have used that little moment. And I thought. Shame. I felt shame. But also, I was a theater kid, so I thought you had to do the whole thing perfectly. Turns out, not so true. More true in a sitcom, but less true in television and film. So don't break. Just stay in it. But it doesn't mean that we don't mess with each other. We do it on purpose, for sure. Like, when we. That's the fun. I mean, you know, we take our time working with the audience and having fun and setting each other up. And sometimes we'll just do something completely incorrectly that leaves the other actor all by themselves. And that's so funny. I love that. Is there a moment that you did that that was particularly thrilling for you on the show? Every day. Every day. We do it in rehearsal. We do it show night. Well, I'm very strict about it. If we're doing a scene and Taya says a line that is not the appropriate line for my next response, I'm liable to just say no and walk out and start over again. Because that works. It does work. I love that. I love that. You mentioned Barry Levinson and advice early in your career. Taya, can you tell us of a piece of advice that you got early that you still, after having acted in so many things, that you still kind of hold on to as this is something that continues to resonate with me? It's so simple that it, listen, that's it, that's it. Don't go out in order to do anything or impress or be. Even in a sitcom, listen. And the gold that can be mined from the other guy, it's just, it's funny, I just had a conversation with my daughter who is now acting and she's in a new show. Okay, yeah, I'm her mother, here it comes. She's starring in a new show called Thunder Road with Dennis Quaid and she's now working down in Atlanta on this job. And she called me day before yesterday because she said, oh wow, I just had the most amazing experience and I said, what, you know, and she said, well, I didn't really have any lines in this scene, so I was kind of relaxed and I wasn't thinking it was going to be a really big scene. And the other actor, I don't know if this is a spoiler, it's not a spoiler, don't tell anybody, okay, just don't tell anybody. So she's a race car driver and she crashes and the guy who she's racing for, she's like really kind of full of disappointment and he sees her and he starts talking to her and she said she'd read the scene a lot, but because she had no lines, she was a little like, oh, it's going to be light for me, it's going to be easy, like, you know, she just was ready for the end of a long day. And she said this guy started working and started talking to her and her entire performance changed and she went from just this note of playing the shame of having crashed this car to letting him get through to her and she was saying, everybody crashes the first time, but you put 11,000 asses in seats. And she just heard it and she let it kind of work a little bit and he kept giving her little bits of confidence and she started to smile and then he goes, the last line to her was like, so buck the fuck up. And she said, and she's smiling and he walked out of the scene and she just burst into tears and she was like, I felt like I'm going to, I can, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to win the next race for this guy. She was like, I thought I was having a psychotic break and she said, but I just did that thing. I just listened and this whole scene came out of it and I just, I, I, I love that, that, you know. I got two pieces of advice that I'll tell you. One is very simple. It was from my sister, Tyne, who said, very simply, stand up and tell the truth. And I think that applies to every medium and every actor who's trying to, you know, tell a story. It's also good when you're dating. Sure. I mean, I'm just saying. Yeah. And the other one was from my dad and this is more cryptic. He said, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him act. And I'm still trying to figure that, I think what he meant is, is like no one makes you do it. You know, so like, so don't like get over yourself and know that, you know, if you're going to do it, it's on you, you know? So if you're, if you're being hurt or, you know, and convention about your career, like you don't have to do it. You have to be able to have the personality to withstand all the exigencies of being a professional actor. What was the moment similar to your daughter for, for each of you where you thought, oh, this acting thing, it's clicked. I can do this. I know exactly when mine was, it was my freshman year in high school. I was doing a production of Twelfth Night playing Malvolio, which is a part I will probably never be cast for anyway. My parents who were divorced, whatever, came to see the thing and they told me afterwards, you know, and it was abbreviated because it was high school and they told me afterwards that they didn't realize until the second act that it was me. And I was like, yes, I got them. I fooled them. And there was something so amazing about knowing that that was possible. Now that's when I knew that I had some aptitude for acting. That's not when I decided to become a professional. That happened way later because I didn't know that if I, whether or not I had the personality for it because, you know, acting is the easy part. It's the waiting, the rejection, the uncertainty. That's the part that you don't know whether you can do until you get out there and try to do it. Honestly, I think it was on a league of their own. As my dad said, you need a VHS to see her in the movie. Awesome. But honestly, I was actually a great ball player. And that's why I got in that thing. And so I spent a lot of time like helping the actresses break their gloves and standing and watching. And I think before this, and this is partly the celebrity bullshit, I think I had this idea that like you would need three nipples. That's a really bad example. I don't know where it came from. It reminds me of that joke from that great Warren Beatty movie, what was it called, where this waitress comes up and says, breasts are like martinis, one ain't enough and three's too many. Thank you. But I think I was on that set every day for months. And I watched and I watched. And it occurred to me then like, oh, I can do this. I can do this. And I think for a long time I couldn't. But I mean, I think that there was something that just clicked me out of thinking that I wasn't enough, that I was missing something. All I was missing was, you know, they had more movie tickets under their belts, you know. It was not, you don't need three nipples. How good. Thank you for getting me out of that one. Way to bring that back to that. When you're doing the show in front of the audience, do you ever have that experience where the way you play a line or the way you play a scene does not get the reaction? Like something that you thought would kill doesn't, or something that you didn't think would kill absolutely does? Yeah. All the time. And then we'd like get angry. The people who are the most surprised are the writers, because they write these things. And you perform it perfectly and the audience is just. And sometimes then what you do is you lean over and you go, they wrote it. But actually that's where the fun starts, because you can't, it's not like theater and you can't really fall on your face and you can step out, the scene's over at that point if they don't laugh. Like you want to watch a bunch of actors get real still, all of a sudden it's like. Do you want to go? And then, and then you just, sometimes you even just say, hey, that was funny. And then they laugh. I don't know. It's so much fun. I, I highly recommend that we continue to bring the sitcom back. It's free. It's fun. And I, as an actor, I don't think there's a better, I don't think there's a better playpen. When you think about these characters, do you, I mean, do you think about the kind of like digging into their lives over the course? Like anytime you sign on to do a sitcom, are you like, yeah, I'm, I'm looking forward to mining this with these characters. Here's the thing though, the, the, the good news and the bad news about all television, but sitcoms I think particularly is that you want to have characters where you know the, the essential, you know, qualities of their, of their personality. But the writers have to be very facile because if they see something that's working really well, they'll start writing to it or if they see something that's not working, they'll, they'll leave that out. And I remember on Wings, Stephen Webber and I found out in Stephen, oh, thank you. We found out in season five that something like, you know, our father committed suicide and our mother was hospitalized in a mental institution when we were kids. And we were like, okay, we have to reshoot the first four seasons. Like what, what? You know, if we had known that at the beginning, everything would have been different. So sometimes, I mean, it's, it's like that thing in, you know, soap operas where sometimes like the, your favorite character is being played by a different person for a couple of days. It's like, what? You just have to go with it. Yeah. But so the answer is you can't, you know, you can't mine it too much because you might be painting yourself into a corner that you get unpainted from. Yeah. You potentially have years at it and you, you do want to stay a little facile or not. And then you just do something else and you have fun. Well, I hope you do have years at it with, with Newlyweds, which premieres October 23rd. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow night. Tomorrow. Tim Daly and Taya Leone, congratulations. Thank you. On this show. And thank you so much for being here. You guys, thank you for coming. Thank you all so much. That's really sweet. Thank you.